


Married to Amazement

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Ritualistic Self Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 07:32:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3438827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zombie Apocalypse weddings aren't like normal weddings. They can't be. And Daryl and Beth have never exactly been traditional. </p>
<p>(Post-Coda, unspecified time and place, Beth is alive, take all that as read)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Married to Amazement

**Author's Note:**

> Idea for this came from a tremendously emotional flailfest with [bethgreenesgirlgang](http://bethgreenesgirlgang.tumblr.com) and [sparks-of-greene](http://sparks-of-greene.tumblr.com) and they should be held entirely responsible.

_When it’s over, I want to say: all my life_  
 _I was a bride married to amazement._  
 _I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms._

_When it is over, I don’t want to wonder_  
 _if I have made of my life something particular, and real._  
 _I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,_  
 _or full of argument._

_I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world._  
― Mary Oliver

 

They aren’t telepathic. That would be silly. The dead are walking, but that would still be some kind of step too far.

But they do have a way of speaking without speaking. Discussing. Weighing pros and cons. Coming to decisions. Like she’s meeting him halfway, and he’s doing the same for her; words come easy to her, not so much to him, so they’ve learned each other’s languages. They come to decisions, move smoothly together through the world, somehow in sync and time and rhythm, and everyone else watches and marvels a little.

I mean, there’s a lot to marvel at. There’s a lot here that’s pretty marvelous.

So this isn’t something they talk about. Understand: There’s no bent knee, there’s no ring, there’s no question. There’s no ritual, no exchange of shiny things. There’s no church but the trees. They don’t need anyone to officiate, and no one has to walk her anywhere. No one needs to be his best anything. They’re each their own best everythings.

Understand: This is not a fairy tale. This is nowhere near as simple as that.

But also understand: Fairy tales are the branches of a tree which has always been bloody at the root. Fairy tales reach far back into the flesh and bone of stories, and old stories carry with them the truth that blood must be spilled in order to make anything happen.

So.

Moonlight. Half moon, perfectly divided, perfectly balanced. Ordinarily this would be massively unsafe, and if anyone knew it now there would be some exasperation, some _were you two seriously_ but no one does know. It’s just them under the trees, and no one - living or dead - will disturb them.

You can be their witnesses.

He doesn’t have to ask her if she’s sure, and she doesn’t have to ask it either. Not herself, not him. When she came back he returned her knife, and he said nothing when she took it from him - slow, fingers brushing his. _It’s all right now._ That was what she said without speaking.

_Thank you._

Now the moon casts the blade in silver, and as she turns it in the light they both think it looks sort of unreal. Like an artifact of one of those old, bloody stories. Something that might, if used in the proper way, do magic.

Understand: The dead are walking. This is an age of miracles.

He gives her his hand, his forearm, the inside of his wrist turned up to her. And she’s not looking at it when she makes the cut - small, hardly anything, but enough. His skin is pale in the moonlight. The blood looks black when it wells up, shines like liquid obsidian.

She hands the knife to him and gives him her wrist. Her right one. And of course he doesn’t need to ask why.

The cut is quick, but somehow it lingers, and she closes her eyes briefly, her breath catching. It doesn’t hurt. Or the hurt isn’t exactly painful. She thinks the years do something to pain, change you and change the way you feel it; pain when you’re a child is immense, world-shattering, but you grow up and you get older and you learn to live with pain. You and pain become companions. Even friends. Pain walks you through your life, ever-present. Pain is with you at its end.

So pain is here now to make this real.

They reach for each other at the same moment and in the same way, perfectly in sync and time and rhythm, and clasp hands, press wrists, cut to cut and blood to blood, and what’s inside them that won’t let them die is now flowing between them, and they both perceive a kind of dark poetry in that.

They say nothing at all, bound up and warmed all through, and everything is still.

This moment has boundaries. It doesn’t extend beyond itself. You cross the border into its territory, but you can’t be a citizen in that country; you must always leave. So they will, and they both know it. Stories end, and the endings are not always happily-ever-after, but if we’re lucky and blessed there might be happiness.

In that country we make our promises.

Understand: There is no deeper vow than blood.


End file.
